Main menu

Post navigation

MONETARY HISTORY CALENDAR January 11 – 17

1757 – BIRTH OF ALEXANDER HAMILTON, FIRST SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY OF THE UNITED STATES
Hamilton was a major proponent of First Bank of the United States. The bank’s name gave the impression that the bank was public when it was actually privately owned. The private bank created the nation’s money as government loans – at interest – and to private individuals. Eighty percent of the stock was privately held. Hamilton considered public debt “a public blessing” because it would tie the wealthy (who would own the government bonds) of the country to the government, and they would in turn provide political support for higher taxes to pay off the government bonds.

1893 – DEATH OF BENJAMIN F. BUTLER, US GENERAL, US REPRESENTATIVE (MASSACHUSETTS) AND GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS
“The government shall issue an amount equal to its taxes…which shall be lawful money and legal tender for all debts, public and private, which by law are not made payable in coin.”

JANUARY 12

1936 – DEATH OF JOHN HYLAN, MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY, 1918-1925
“The real menace of our republic is this invisible government, which, like a giant octopus, sprawls its slimy length over city, state and nation. Like the octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self created screen….At the head of this octopus are the Rockefeller Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses generally referred to as international bankers. The little coterie of powerful international bankers virtually run the United States government for their own selfish purposes. They practically control both political parties.”

JANUARY 13

1808 – BIRTH OF SALMON P. CHASE, US SENATOR (OHIO), GOVERNOR OF OHIO, US TREASURY SECRETARY UNDER ABRAHAM LINCOLN, CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE US SUPREME COURT
“My agency in procuring the passage of the National Bank Act, was the greatest financial mistake of my life. It has built up a monopoly that affects every interest in the country. It should be repealed. But before this can be accomplished, the people will be arrayed on one side and the banks on the other in a contest such as we have never seen in this country.” The National Bank Act established a system of nationally chartered banks. Before the Act, most banks were chartered by states. The Act permitted these new nationally chartered banks to turn government bonds into the US Treasury in exchange for the right to print an equal amount of debt-based Bank Money. This undermined U.S. Greenbacks, which was debt-free public money.

2007 – ARTICLE PUBLISHED BY JAMES PETRAS, PROFESSOR (EMERITUS), BINGHAMTON UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK
“Within the financial ruling class…political leaders come from the public and private equity banks, namely Wall Street – especially Goldman Sachs, Blackstone, the Carlyle Group and others. They organize and fund both major parties and their electoral campaigns. They pressure, negotiate and draw up the most comprehensive and favorable legislation on global strategies and sectorial policies…They pressure the government to “bailout” bankrupt and failed speculative firms and to balance the budget by lowering social expenditures instead of raising taxes on speculative “windfall” profits…These private equity banks are involved in every sector of the economy, in every region of the world economy and increasingly speculate in the conglomerates which are acquired. Much of the investment funds now in the hands of the US investment banks, hedge funds and other sectors of the financial ruling class originated in the profits extracted from workers in the manufacturing and service sector.” Global Research – January 13, 2007

JANUARY 14

1875 – U.S. CONGRESS PASSES SPECIE RESUMPTION ACT
Wall Street bankers hated federal Greenbacks (U.S. created debt-free money issued by the administration of Republican President Abraham Lincoln.). They preferred “hard money” or “specie” money (paper money backed by gold), since the major banks controlled most of the nation’s gold. Ohio Senator John Sherman (so close was he to the First National Bank of New York that the bank was dubbed “Fort Sherman”) was the major advocate of the Specie Resumption Act, passed during the lame-duck controlled Congress (where have we heard that before). The Act legislated the U.S. Treasury to resume the issuance of legal tender notes backed only by gold (Greenbacks were only backed by the faith and credit of the US). The Act also took steps to reduce the amount of Greenbacks in circulation — a step toward the creation of bank issued debt-money that the government would borrow from them at interest vs using government money without having to pay interest. Farmers and small manufactures opposed the Act, fearful that a contraction of the money supply would lead to a recession or depression. The Act took effect on January 1, 1879. It was a major step toward the re-consolidation of the nation’s money supply and economy toward the Money Trust.

2009 – DEATH OF CHARLES WALTERS, FOUNDER OF ACRES MAGAZINE, A VOICE FOR ECO-AGRICULTURE
“Once upon a time the nobles of Europe believed they had accomplished the physical impossibility of perpetual interest simply by owning all the land and raking in tribute from the peasantry, and when death finally pulled down an economic maggot, then there was always the heir. The historical showdown arrived, of course, and the ‘new nobles’ were forced to invent a more subtle form of tribute taking. It came on as debt, interest, compound interest, and all the institutional arrangements required to make the producing community share its income with the creditor. For centuries the details have stacked up, but economists [by and large] have failed to draw the appropriate conclusions.”

JANUARY 15

2014 – SPEECH BY INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND (IMF) MANAGING DIRECTOR CHRISTINE LAGARDE AT THE NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON, DC
“Even for the advanced economies, however, the outlook [in 2014) is still subject to significant risks. With inflation running below many central banks’ targets, we see rising risks of deflation, which could prove disastrous for the recovery. If inflation is the genie, then deflation is the ogre that must be fought decisively.”
The sword used by private central banks to slay the deflation “ogre” was out-of-thin-air money printing. While the Federal Reserve gradually wound down their Quantitative Easing (QE) program, other nations (Japan, China, and Russia) ramped theirs up.

JANUARY 16

1911 – ISSUANCE OF PAMPHLET SUGGESTING PLAN FOR NATIONAL PRIVATE CENTRAL BANK
US Senator Nelson Aldrich introduced a plan for creation of a national private central bank based on the conclusions developed by bankers who met secretly on Jekyll Island. GA. The Citizens League, later the National Citizens League, was formed to promote the plan. The establishment of the Federal Reserve System was the event result of the plan.

2009 – US GOVERNMENT AND FEDERAL RESERVE BAILS OUT BANK OF AMERICA CORPORATION
The U.S. Treasury and the FDIC provides $118 billion of loans, securities, and other assets in exchange for preferred shares. The U.S. Treasury invested an additional $20 billion in the bank from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) in exchange for preferred stock.

JANUARY 17

1706 – BIRTH OF BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
“The colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been that England took away from the colonies their money, which created unemployment and dissatisfaction. The inability of the colonists to get power to issue their own money permanently out of the hands of George III and the international bankers was the prime reason for the revolutionary war.” “This effect of paper currency is not understood in England. And indeed the whole is a mystery to the politicians how we have been able to continue a war for four years without money and how we could pay with paper that had no previously fixed fund appropriated specifically to redeem it. This currency…is a wonderful machine.”

2002 – PUBLICATION OF “FUTURE OF MONEY” BY BERNARD LIETAER, BELGIAN AUTHOR, ECONOMISTS, PROFESSOR AND CIVIL ENGINEER
“Your money’s value is determined by a global casino of unprecedented proportions: $2 trillion are traded per day in foreign exchange markets, 100 times more than the trading volume of all the stock markets of the world combined. Only 2% of these foreign exchange transactions relate to the “real” economy reflecting movements of real goods and services in the world, and 98% are purely speculative. This global casino is triggering the foreign exchange crises, which shook Mexico in 1994-5, Asia in 1997 and Russia in 1998. These emergencies are the dislocation symptoms of the old Industrial Age money system.”

———————–

Why this calendar? Many people have questions about the root causes of our economic problems. Some questions involve money, banks and debt. How is money created? Why do banks control its quantity? How has the money system been used to liberate (not often) and oppress (most often) us? And how can the money system be “democratized” to rebuild our economy and society, create jobs and reduce debt? Our goal is to inform, intrigue and inspire through bite size weekly postings listing important events and quotes from prominent individuals (both past and present) on money, banking and how the money system can help people and the planet. We hope the sharing of bits of buried history will illuminate monetary and banking issues and empower you with others to create real economic and political justice. This calendar is a project of the Northeast Ohio American Friends Service Committee. Adele Looney, Phyllis Titus, Donna Schall, Leah Davis, Alice Francini, Deb Jose and Greg Coleridge helped in its development. Please forward this to others and encourage them to subscribe. To subscribe/unsubscribe or to comment on any entry, email monetarycalendar@yahoo.com